REP. JOE PITTS: More government won't make college cheaper

President Obama recently toured New York and Pennsylvania pushing a new agenda to start grading the graders—U.S. colleges and universities. The plan he put forward would have the federal government set standards and then rank institutions of higher learning. Eventually, these rankings would be used to determine how much federal aid is handed out to schools.

College is increasingly unaffordable for many Americans. That’s a big problem since college attendance is a huge factor in whether someone can climb the economic ladder. For millions of Americans, a college degree helps them climb out of poverty and into the middle class. If the costs are too high, college becomes accessible only to folks who have already made it. That’s not anyone’s idea of the American dream.

While I agree with the President that higher education should be in reach for every student who qualifies, I don’t believe his proposal will have the desired effect. First of all, there are already plenty of college rankings for students and parents to consider. Secondly, as federal intervention in the college market has grown, the costs of college have risen.

There is no lack of college rankings. In fact, it’s an industry all on its own. U.S. News and World Report, Forbes, the Princeton Review and others publish annual rankings of the quality of institutions. If anything, federal rankings will probably look at fewer factors. It’s unlikely that the Department of Education will review living arrangements or cafeteria food. We don’t need the government to pay for less informative grades.

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There is little evidence that more intervention and bureaucracy will bring costs down. As federal investment in grants and student loans has grown, costs have risen even faster. In the last 30 years, the cost of attending college has risen 439 percent. A University of Oregon study found that each dollar increase in Pell Grants was matched by a dollar increase in costs of college at private institutions.

Federal backing for student loans has led to an explosion of student debt. The total owed by American students has climbed to $1.2 trillion, up 20 percent in just the last two years. One-third of students borrowers never even get a degree. Many of them default, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.

Universities and colleges became reliant on the seemingly bottomless amount of the money the federal government was willing to provide. There’s hardly a school in the country that hasn’t spent significant amounts of money in the past few years on new facilities and programs.

It is now clear that there is a bottom to federal spending. We can’t afford to keep mortgaging the future to pay for present demands.

Higher education may finally be waking up to the reality that they are pricing students out. The New York Times reports that college enrollment fell last year by 2 percent. This year, some schools found that they were well short of the number of students necessary to maintain professors and classrooms. For the first time in decades, some colleges didn’t raise tuition at all. Of course, it would take years of no tuition hikes for inflation to catch back up to the costs increases of the previous decades.

Grading every school in the nation and tieing those grades to aid levels would be a massive and expensive undertaking. It would also be rife with lobbying by colleges and universities. Inevitably, well-connected schools would get what they wanted out of the system.

As a former educator, I know how valuable a college degree can be. I’ve introduced legislation that would allow employers to help pay into qualified college savings plans free of taxes for employees and their children. Saving for college is far superior to borrowing.

For years, colleges and universities could count on a growing number of students and growing federal support. We have to stop spending indiscriminately and focus on helping those who really need assistance. At the same time, we have to avoid the temptation to manage higher education out of Washington. Subjecting schools to a new bureaucracy won’t help students pay their tuition.

Rep. Joe Pitts is a Republican who represents Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional Districth, which includes parts of Berks, Chester and Lancaster counties.